Work on display

Work on display:
Michael Blakey was the lead scientist on the investigation of New York's African Burial Ground, and it only made sense for Blakey and his graduate students to be involved in the programming of the interactive vistor's center for the site, opened by the National Park Service in February, 2010.

Research informs New York African Burial Ground's visitor center

by Erin Zagursky
| May 10, 2010

Years of work by a William & Mary faculty member and
his students went on display in February when the National Park Service opened
the New York African Burial Ground's interactive visitor center in Lower
Manhattan.

Michael Blakey, National Endowment for the Humanities
Professor at the College of William and Mary, served as the lead scientist at
the burial ground, which is the first national monument dedicated to Africans
of early New York and Americans of African descent. The site's visitor center
showcased much of the research that was done as a result of the work that
Blakey and his students have completed.

During his decade of work at the burial ground, Blakey
coordinated research of the site and its remains among teams of archaeologists,
biological anthropologists and historians, among others. The archaeological and
historical contexts of the remains were analyzed by Howard University research
teams and the Institute for Historical Biology (IHB) at William & Mary,
which Blakey directs.

Over the last few years, a comparative database on the
bioarchaeology of the African Diaspora was developed at the IHB. That database,
which has been used by about a dozen William & Mary undergraduates for
research projects, provided much of the information that was used to design the
permanent exhibit in the new visitor center.

Blakey and a group of four William & Mary graduate
students assisted the firm that was hired to design the visitor center. The
firm met with Blakey and other specialists to come up with drafts of what the
exhibition would look like. Those drafts were then brought to the students who
examined everything from the language to the data, using the IHB's database.

According to a press release from the National Park
Service, the new visitor center will seek to "tell the story of free and
enslaved Africans in early New York and the role of the African descendant
community in preserving the burial ground following its 1991 rediscovery." The
new center includes four exhibit areas, a 40-person theatre and a store.